According to a video interview below that Original Prop Blog did at last year’s Comic-Con, Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy, remembers shooting no such scene. Hamill does go on to say that it doesn’t mean the clip wasn’t shot for Return Of The Jedi, after all, he wasn’t in the scene where Luke’s hand is being repaired either. So, there’s a chance that it’s not Mark Hamill in this newly revealed lightsaber scene.

Well this makes the missing scene a little less awesome.

What do you think? Does this make the missing scene less authentic? I kind of feel cheap knowing that isn’t really Luke Skywalker building that lightsaber, but some cheap extra they brought in. Hopefully we’ll get some clarification on the situation. What once made me happy, now makes me a little sad.

You can see his chin in one part and see the dimple in it that Hamill has; also at the very end, you see a side profile which also looks like Hamill. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s really him. But, maybe it is. That interview with Hamill was last year and he was asked about the scene because there was a prop being sold that was being labeled as an authentic replica of the lightsaber used in that scene (or, at least, that’s what I gathered from the video interview). If it’s not Hamill, then yeah, that’s a bummer, but I still love the extra scene because of what it’s about. If they wrote a book that took place all in that cave with Luke training to be a Jedi and practicing what he’d do at Jabba’s and building that lightsaber, I would buy it and read it in a second!

Chris

Wow… what a surprise, George Lucas CGIs-up a fake Mark Hammill for a deleted scene to sell his heinous Special Editions… further polluting the original trilogy. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jar-Jar Binks appear as a ghost at the end of this movie. Seriously, is anyone going to actually pay money for these abominations on Blu Ray?

Eve is totally right. The video as posted in this entry was concerned with the ‘reveal’ luke saber, a prop that is touted as authentic and was almost put on auction for $40,000 recently. The reveal saber prop in question slides open, comes apart, and twists around. No one at ILM can confirm they built it, it’s not in the script, and the people who own it won’t allow it to be inspected. The way that the lightsaber opens on the top in this scene is consistent with a prop that exists in the LFL archives. There might be a context issue with involving that particular video as an argument that Lucas fabricated this whole thing.

The truth of the matter is that for the deleted scene, it’s probably likely that it only took Mark one or two takes to film it on a sound stage. There’s not even a line of dialogue and the effects included in the shot is so minimal that it probably didn’t require much logistics on the set. It might be quite likely that Mark initially didn’t remember something that he did for an hour or two, twenty eight years ago, while working on a film that required almost three months of principal photography. I have forgotten sandwiches and the middle names of girlfriends from four years ago, let alone entire workdays.

The matte painting of the cave from the outside exists, and Anthony Daniels remembers being filmed standing outside in the desert by himself in the threepio costume and I’m sure that when we get to see this on Blu_ray, it will be apparent that c3po is rear-projected into the scene.

I think it’s funny how much speculation is being kicked up over footage refilmed on a cell phone as not looking authentic. If I remember correctly, Hamill said he remembered filming this just before or after this was shown at Celebration.

Whoa, I wrote a lot. Star Wars and filmmaking are two of my favorite things.

It amuses me how people whinge and whine and carry on about how Lucas is pissing on their youth by making changes. You know what? Who cares if it wasn’t Hamill? It looked fantastic, and I hope they keep bringing out more of the deleted scenes. In fact, they should fucking reinsert them into the movies just to piss off all the whingers.

jmarsh2007

This is fake the scene is not put together anywhere close to being the storyboard. The prop saber is so detailed that if the only thing thats showed is him screwing around with the underside of a button that we cant really see in that alone makes it a fake. This is to good to be true. I can’t even think of the number of scenes actually shot that EXIST and he gives us this. He gives us this trash and then still refuses to give us the original trilogy. Sad.

mike

This scene has been discussed and discussed for years. As Russ said, the matte painting exists (I’ve seen it), Daniels remembers filming the parts outside the cave (very often republished interview), and there are storyboards for it. So many scenes that are really in the films look nothing like the storyboards. Why should this one have to? Additionally, crew members have been asked about this scene and some say they know nothing about it while others say it was definitely filmed and lost. Doesn’t anyone besides me think it’s possible that Hamill was asked to say nothing about the scene so that it could be released in the so-often-secretive Lucas way? This kind of stuff happens all of the time with Star Wars. Who cares if it’s really Hamill? You are acting like Hamill is really Luke Skywalker… he’s an actor playing a character… so are his stand-ins (there was Collin Skeeping and at least one other guy). They are all Luke Skywalker. Who cares who’s playing it. I mean really, who is Darth Vader; James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Bob Anderson or Sebastian Shaw? The scene looked great, the scene was conceived during writing and filming and now we get to see it. I’m pretty thankful, myself.

Eric

I don’t know, from what the Mark Hamill interview it doesn’t sound like he “doesn’t remember shooting it,” he flat out said he didn’t shoot a scene like that. It sounds like at best it was a stand in. That does kinda suck but I almost wish I didn’t know that.